


Lost At Sea

by MangoMartini



Series: Sailing [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-09
Updated: 2015-06-09
Packaged: 2017-12-23 20:48:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/930941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MangoMartini/pseuds/MangoMartini
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Please be aware that as of 6/9/15 this fic has been updated and heavily revised. </p><p>Steve and Tony grow up down the street from each other, but even that doesn't make things any easier. </p><p>Originally written for starspangledsprocket's prompt: Tony is actually really reserved around people he genuinely cares about. This causes Steve to believe his affection for Tony is unrequited.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [starspangledsprocket](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starspangledsprocket/gifts).



"And don't go too far!" his grandmother had shouted after him, smiling and waving her hand. She sat on the rocking chair on the porch, knitting in her lap and a glass of iced tea on the small chair next to her. It was all a bit cliche, Steve would realize later in his life, but for now, like so many other things, he didn’t know enough to care. 

Because it was a safe neighborhood, safe enough for Steve to chase his chocolate Labrador puppy down the street, as long as he stayed in sight of his grandmother's house--one of her few rules. As long as he did that, he could stay out in the summer sun until he got as sweat-sticky as he could bear, before half-crawling back into the house for some water and maybe even a bowl of ice cream. Summer meant, sometimes, dessert before dinner. 

Now the sun was setting, casting vibrant orange and red hues into the sky, and Steve was almost out of sight of the house. Bucky had taken off with his favorite chew toy, a red octopus that was now missing three legs, and wasn't giving it up. Steve's scrawny ten year old legs could only carry him so far. 

But they both stopped when they heard the screams.

"Anthony Stark you get back here right now!"

Then there was the sound of a smaller, younger scream, almost a shriek, and the tinny finality of the slamming of a screen door. Bucky tried to hide behind Steve's thin ankles, tail between his legs. No one yelled at their house except the television.

That's when it happened: the first time Steve Rogers ever saw Tony Stark.

Tony was a small child, younger looking than Steve, and just as thin. He was running as if he couldn’t think of what else to do with his little limbs. His face was red. His hair was shaved close and his glasses looked like they were meant for someone bigger, older.  
But that's not what Steve noticed the most.

Tony was crying.

"Hey!" Steve called, hurrying over to where Tony had gone to hide behind Mrs. James' gardenia bushes. Mrs. James had a blue and yellow parrot and played canasta with his grandmother every Thursday; Steve liked her. 

He crawled behind the bushes after Tony, Bucky following.Steve sat next to Tony, about two child-sized hand spaces between them, and squinted at him. The last time Steve had cried like that had been at the funeral. Or maybe it had been just after.

"Go away," Tony demanded, shoving Steve in the shoulder before burying his face and his giant glasses in his hands. "I'm fine. Fine. Just go away."

The push caught Steve by surprise and he all but fell onto Bucky before catching himself just in time. Steve sat back up again, but left another hand space between them. "You don’t look fine."

Bucky was whining now, wriggling in between them and trying to jump on to Tony to lick his covered face. 

There was a moment, long and drawn like when you pull a string of bubblegum out of your mouth, sticky and endless, where all Tony did was cry into his hands. Steve didn't say anything. He dug a little hole in the dirt with his fingers and let the gum hang there.

"I'm fine." Tony repeated finally, lifting his head and wiping his eyes on the back of his hand. He took his glasses off to clean them on the hem of his shirt and, before he could finish, Bucky saw the opportunity and hopped into Tony’s lap.

"Is this your dog?" Tony asked. He put his glasses back on without cleaning them, but waited for Steve to nod before scratching Bucky behind the ears.

"His name's Bucky. I got him for Christmas." The pride in his voice was unmistakable. Not just anyone got a puppy for Christmas, the way they did in the movies. It was only March, but warm enough in this part of the state, so Bucky hadn't grown much yet. But he had feet too big for his body, much like Steve, and his grandma promised that meant Bucky would keep growing for at least a year. 

"And I'm Steve." He added as an afterthought. He kept his eyes on the space between his dog and his new friend, not wanting to focus on either of them too long. 

Tony hummed acknowledgement, but now Bucky had rolled off Tony's lap and on to the ground and Tony was scratching Bucky's belly in the place that made Bucky's leg twitch all funny. "I'm Tony," he said finally. "We just moved here." 

There was more there, but Steve didn’t know enough to ask, not at ten years old.

"Oh, cool. I moved here too. Right before Christmas," Steve explained, "to live with my grandma."

Bucky barked when Tony stopped petting him, wriggling in the dirt until Tony got back to it. "Not your parents?" Tony asked, eyes narrowing on Steve from behind those glasses.

Steve looked away from Tony. He thought that, after he was done being the new kid in this school, that he wouldn’t have to say it anymore. The words were unwelcome in his mouth. "They died."

"Oh."

The conversation continued after that. Tony asked more about Bucky, which brought up a conversation about Christmas, until Tony was explaining the plot of a science fiction book he had just finished using his arms to show the scope of the interstellar explosions. Steve kept nodding, rapt, even if he didn’t understand half of it. 

Years later, Steve will be able to pinpoint this as the moment he fell in love with Tony Stark. Here behind the gardenia bush, listening to Tony make explosion noises and smiling like he had planned them all himself. 

Now, he just thought he had made a new friend. 

They stayed behind that bush until there was hardly any light left in the sky, and a woman’s voice was calling Tony’s name. It was a different voice this time, warm and sweet like the air around them. 

Steve watched as the voice made Tony's eyes go wide, and his hand instantly stop petting Bucky.

"Tony! Oh Tony, darling, where are you?"

"I gotta go," Tony said to Steve, before hurrying out of the bushes. He stood and tried to brush the dirt off the seat of his pants. "Mom, I'm here."


	2. Chapter 2

It took about two weeks after that for Steve and Tony to become inseperable best friends. They hung out at school, playing outside, or even over at Steve’s house. Never at Tony’s place, though because, as Tony said the only time Steve dared to ask, his house was no fun. They hung out at school, playing outside, or even over at Steve’s house. Never at Tony’s place, though because, as Tony said the only time Steve dared to ask, his house was no fun. 

Tony was in the fourth grade like Steve, despite being a year younger than Steve. At first Steve didn't get it, didn't like it, and when he found out it almost destroyed their friendship. Tony ended up with straight As without even trying. 

What saved the relationship was that Tony always willing to help Steve with math. Other students still gave Tony a hard time for being younger, smaller, and smarter than them, but it was about the same with Steve (at least the smaller part) and it had made the two fast friends. That, and fractions only ever made sense when Tony explained them.

So when Steve got the wind knocked out of him and a black eye playing soccer with the fifth graders during fourth period even though his grandma had told him not to (“You’re barely as a big as the children in your own grade, Stevie, so don’t you dare do try to play with those bigger boy”) he wasn’t surprised when, just fifteen minutes after school let out, there was the sound of tapping on his bedroom window. 

Steve’s grandmother had to come pick him up after the black eye had happened, lecturing him all the while about how he was small and fragile and even asking Steve if he wanted her to talk to those boys’ parents. When they got home and Steve finally got a good look at his eye, he immediately thought of Tony's mother that night he and Tony met. The thought had felt like a second black eye, and had gone to lie down with an ice pack on his eye that his grandmother had demanded that he use.

That was when he heard the tapping. Steve got out of bed, turned on the light, and opened the blinds. There was Tony, still with his backpack on. His hair stuck up at odd angles, the way it did when he pulled at it out of stress.

"Steve,” Tony said, voice muffled by the glass. He had his forehead pressed against the window and kept tapping at it with his knuckles. “Steve you giant idiot let me in."

Steve hesitated. For all their hanging out, Tony had never been in his bedroom. Tony knew where it was, of course, the two bedroom house wasn’t big enough for secrets like that. But Steve's bedroom was an old guest room that still didn't feel like his, even after sleeping in it for six months. Or maybe it was that he still felt like a guest.

Sure, his papers were on the table and his toys were under the bed and his clothes were in the drawer, but the American flag comforter and the cross stitched kittens framed on the walls were not his. He had wanted Superman sheets, but his grandmother had never been able to find them at Good Will.

Steve shook his head, but opened the window anyway. Even in the fourth grade, he knew he could never say no to Tony. 

Tony climbed in the second it was open enough for him to do so.

"How did you do that?" Steve asked, stepping back. It was a one story house, but the window was almost as tall as he and Tony were.

Tony shrugged. "Brought a stool to put in the bushes. Can't see it from the other side, but it does the job. I heard you went home after P.E but they wouldn't tell me why. And you missed the spelling quiz, which was a totally unfair pop quiz so really it's sort of good you missed it. I mean who can spelling neighborhood without--" Tony stopped in the middle of his sentence when finally saw Steve's face.

Tony winced. "Shit." The word hung heavy in the room, like toxic air. Steve had been raised not to swear, even though Tony hadn’t.  
"Soccer," Steve explained. He sat down on his bed and Tony followed. "Thor ran into me when trying to get the ball, and got his shoulder right on my eye. It’s not his fault,” Steve added after a pause, because it wasn’t. Honestly, Thor had seemed more upset about it than Steve had been. 

"Why were you even playing with the fifth graders?" Suddenly, Tony reached over and grabbed Steve's face, moving the bruised skin around a little with his thumb. "It should look better in a few days though," was the diagnosis, as if Tony was a professional at assessing bruises. "Could have been worse. Your grandma going to let you go back to school tomorrow?"

Steve nodded, pulling out of Tony's grip. He didn’t know what to do with the way his skin tingled where Tony had touched it. He rubbed his black eyes, gently, and eventually that feeling went away and left only the shadowed pain. "Yeah. Gran doesn’t like me missing class."

"Good. Who am I supposed to sit with at lunch if you're not there? I spent most of lunch in the library, though, so at least Clint didn’t bother me.” 

Steve nodded again. Clint was in the fifth grade and seemed to think that his skateboard and spiky hair gave him a free pass to throw things at people like him and Tony with scary-good accuracy. He was, as his grandma had once called him in a fit of rage after Steve had complained about Clint throwing rocks at him on his way back from school, a poop. Clint was a grade A poop. 

“Oh, and I brought you this," Tony said, reaching for his backpack and pulling out a handheld gaming system a few games. Steve's mouth fell open and Tony quickly said, "I have the new one, you know? And the games aren’t compatible. I’ve also beaten these all anyway,” Tony went on to say, as Steve still hadn’t take the games from his hands. “So I thought you should have this one. Take it.”

Steve took the system and the games, marveling over them as Tony explained all the different games and how to charge it. The last game like this that Steve had played was Scrabble. 

They ended up half-lying on Steve's bed, backs against the headboard, legs parallel and almost touching. Steve's legs were barely longer than Tony's, though his worn down sneakers were a stark contrast to Tony's new ones, both older but also bigger.

"Jump!" Tony yelled in his ear, "Press A! Now B!" Steve was still fumbling with the game controls with unpracticed thumbs, and Tony was trying to direct him how to exactly jump over the barrels and attack by pressing the different buttons.

Finally Steve died, and Tony laughed so hard his eyes started watering. "That was only the first level. You really suck," Tony declared, looking over at Steve.

Steve couldn't even frown at that, not with the sound of Tony's laugh echoing in his ears. The laugh bounced around like brightly colored rubber balls, the kind his grandmother never let him have because she was afraid he would throw them in the house and break something. It was a sound that made Steve want to reach out and grab it back, hold it close, keep it in his bedside table. "I know I suck."

Tony's face scrunched up a little, like he was about to sneeze, and then it relaxed. "You know, I'm glad we're friends. Even if you have a black eye and suck at video games."

Tony didn’t leave until Steve was called to dinner, scurrying back out the window like he was worried about being caught. Steve kept playing the barrel jumping game after his grandmother had tucked him in and turned off the lights. It didn't get much easier, and Steve didn't get much sleep that night. But the next day at school Steve was able to brag that he had beaten the fifth level.

Tony had still laughed at him, and Steve saw those colors again, bouncing just out of his reach.


	3. Chapter 3

Three years later, and Steve had been sitting at the living room bay window, on the sea foam green frayed cushion, for just about three hours. His long, thin legs were tucked underneath him, and his eyes kept going from the road outside to the clock on the wall. The road hid under a thick layer of rain that had persisted for the last hour and a half, buzzing against the pavement. 

"Anything yet?" his grandmother asked. She sat on her maroon recliner, Bucky curled up at her feet, knitting in her hands. Steve still couldn't tell if it was a sock or a hat, but her thin fingers moved the needles deftly, large blue eyes ever attentive.

Steve frowned and looked back at the window. "No. How long is this going to take, anyway?"

"Well Stevie, it depends really. These things vary. And you know he might not want to talk to you right when he gets back."

As soon as she said that, the sound of a car slowing down made Steve sit straight up. He squinted and pressed his face against the window, trying to see anything. And there it was, the black limo, cautiously creeping down the soaked road. It stopped just out of view, and by then Steve was pulling on his rain boots and Bucky was barking at the door. 

He slammed the door as he ran out, pushing open the umbrella just as he left the safety of the porch. The rain kicked up around his boots as Steve ran through puddles, flicking mud on the back of his knees. Steve kept running, legs gangly and unruly, knowing this might be his only chance.  
Catching his breath, Steve stopped one house before Tony's. He saw Tony's dad on his phone getting out of the limo, brown hair already starting to grey at the temples. He rarely saw Mr. Stark, but it always caught Steve off guard how much Tony looked like his dad. Mr. Stark went into the house and then Tony came out of the limo, dark clothes and an even darker look on his face.

"Tony!"

Steve ran towards him as the limo drove away, standing close to Tony so the umbrella half-covered both of them. "Tony," Steve said again, watching his face closer for a reaction. The lenses of Tony's glasses were smudged, and Steve wanted to grab them and clean them on the hem of his shirt for Tony, like he had done so often before.

Tony looked up at Steve. He'd had to do that ever since last year in sixth grade—when Steve had shot up like a weed, a skinny and tall weed. At eleven, Tony was still years away from any growth spurt. "Hey, Steve. Look, I don't really feel like talking." He crossed his arms, but didn’t move out from under the umbrella. 

"Yeah, I figured. But you haven’t been in school all week and you haven't come over or answered your phone and," Steve paused, switching the umbrella from his right to his left hand, “I don’t know. I was worried.”

"It's raining, Steve," Tony said, as if that answered everything. The dull tone of his voice didn't seem possible from a mouth full of bright red and gold braces.

Thunder cracked in the distance, and the lightening reflected off Tony’s lenses.

"Are you coming back to school on Monday?" Steve asked, sudden and desperate. "I've got all your homework and you missed the history quiz, but you should be fine. I mean, it's you." 

Tony sighed. He looked so little in that tuxedo with his glasses Steve thought, unbearably little. Steve wanted to pull him close and tightened his grip on the umbrella. Tony looked like this one t shirt Steve used to have that got left in the dryer too long and shrunk down to an unusable size. His missed that shirt.

"We're moving."

The thunder cracked again.

"What?"

Tony nodded. "Yeah. As soon as possible. My dad, see, he's never liked this place. We only lived here 'cause my mother wanted to. She wanted me to have a normal childhood.” Tony made a sarcastic noise and rolled his eyes behind his glasses. “And now that she's…he spent the drive back here talking with a realtor to get the house on the market."

It felt like a joke. Steve couldn’t imagine what it would be like without Tony down the street, without Tony tapping on his window at night to come in and play video games, without Tony so close to his life. It felt like it was Tony’s funeral, too. 

"Tony, get your ass in here!" His dad had stuck his head out of the door and then pulled it back in just as suddenly, his voice growling over the rain. 

They both looked towards the door. Tony flinched.

"I'll come over later tonight, okay?" Tony asked. He looked down at his shoes soaking up the rainwater.

"Okay," Steve replied, because of course it was okay, and would always be okay. What wasn’t okay was that it would be the last time. 

Steve walked home in the rain, changing when he got back. He even had his grandma bake chocolate chip and walnut cookies, Tony's favorite, in preparation for when Tony would come over. His grandma always knew when Tony snuck in, even when Steve didn’t tell her. He never told Tony, of course. Somehow Steve knew that Tony liked the idea that he really was sneaking in. 

All so she said Steve could stay up that night, helped him put the cookies on a plate and open the window. And then Steve waited for Tony to show up.

He waited as the rain raged on, not even daring to eat a cookie because he wasn’t sure how many Tony would want. As the minutes went on, Steve contemplated just asking his grandma if Tony could move in with them so he never had to leave. 

But Tony never showed up.


	4. Chapter 4

Art class was Steve’s favorite class of the day. Unlike math or science, art had no rules. Steve could take up a brush or a pencil and create whatever he wanted and always be right, it would always be right. Art was a haven away from high school, a place where even the face that dotted his sketchbooks couldn’t even bother him. 

Steve was so focused on what he was drawing, the way the charcoal scraped against the paper, that he didn’t notice when someone sat down beside him that day in sophomore art class.

"Who's that you're drawing?" the accented voice asked. She came over and tried to look over his broad shoulder at what he was sketching. 

Steve almost fell out of his chair, turning a furious shade of strawberry and quickly flipping to a new page of his sketchbook, a blank page, a safe page. "No one," he said quickly, "It's no one. I’m just practicing,” Steve tried to explain, but he could still feel himself blushing. “Who are you?"

She giggled, as sweet as chocolate chips falling into a mixing bowl. "He looked cute from what I saw from him," she said, and Steve blushed more. "And my name's Peggy. I’m new here." Peggy sat down next to Steve without asking permission. 

Steve stared at Peggy, trying taking in her all in. It was as if she was an art installation. Her curly brown hair hovered just above her shoulders, big brown eyes, and her nose seemed to fit just right on her face. Her lips were painted red as fire. 

Without asking, Steve started to sketch her.

"You're drawing me now, aren't you? Do you not want me to move?" Peggy tried to adjust in the chair. “The light’s not great here. I mostly do photography, you know.”

She explained it as if Steve should have already known, even though they had only met about a minute ago. Steve wasn’t used to having someone treat him so familiar like this, like they were friends already. Steve just shrugged and smudged some charcoal. 

Steve shrugged and smudged some charcoal. "It doesn’t matter to me. You can still talk, too. If you want. Where, uh, are you from?" He couldn’t place the accent, but he knew she wasn’t from around here. No one around here sounded like that, or had lipstick like that. 

During that class, Steve learned that Peggy's family had just moved from London, she was an only child, and she preferred to photograph animals, not people. People were too picky, she explained, and Steve had agreed with her. 

Steve told her about his dog, his grandmother, and the way he had gotten into drawing around the end of seventh grade, when she complimented the sketch. He left out the fact that the only reason he started was because he lost his best friend and couldn’t bring himself to play video games anymore. 

"Well, you're fairly good for only two years of practice. Muscles and artistic talent, rather impressive. I might have to keep you." She giggled again, but didn’t reach out to touch him. Steve couldn’t tell if she didn’t move because she was being drawn, or because she wasn’t actually flirting. 

"I play for the varsity football team," Steve explained, shading in her curls. He had to bulk up before his grandma even let him try out for junior varsity, just to feel safe about him not getting hurt. Steve had wanted to try out just to feel like he belonged somewhere again. 

Peggy quirked up an eyebrow. "Is that supposed to impress me?"

Steve stopped working and looked up at her, tilting his head. "No? It's just…I do. Sorry?"

She laughed again, and Steve found that he couldn’t be upset about it. "Alright then. You know, I used to play rugby back home. I think it’s rather similar to American football."

The bell rang and they exchanged numbers, making hasty plans to meet up after school to talk more about sports and art while they packed up their supplies. 

The promise made Steve’s day drag on, like trying to take a tired Bucky back home after a walk. Steve had friends, of course he did. But they were football friends, English class friends. They were the kind of friends that he spent time with doing homework or running drills, but it had been years since anyone had knocked at his window. 

As soon as the final bell rang, he and Peggy met up at the front of the school to walk to the diner down the street. The walk wasn't bad, over the cracked sidewalk and under the overcast sky, and they hadn’t run out of things to talk about as they arrived. 

Steve held the door open for Peggy as the storm clouds gathered outside. The diner was full of students, as it always was after school given that is was the only place within walking distance of the school that was more than happy to have pimpled and loud teenagers sit for hours and only order one basket of fries and a soda between a group of them.

The diner had the comforting smell of grease and a chipped and slightly falling apart sixties style. Not vintage, just the same decor it had had since the sixties, vinyl maroon seat cushions and all. Together they found an only slightly-sticky booth, ordered, and kept talking.

"Can I get a copy of that sketch when you’re done?" Peggy asked, sipping at her strawberry milkshake. “This is really good, by the way.”

Steve blushed again. No one ever asked for his art but art teachers and his grandma. "Uh, yeah, if you still like it when I finish it." He took two fries from the basket between them and dipped them in his vanilla shake. 

Peggy wrinkled her nose. “Now that is revolting.”

The diner door opened, as it had been doing for the last half an hour since they had arrived, but this time was different. The atmosphere shifted, and loud voices carried over the general conversational din. The air itself seemed to become uncomfortable, and rain began to sprinkle outside. 

One voice cut through them all, and Steve slid down in the booth, trying to hide, to become small like he used to be. It wasn’t like he could, being nearly six feet tall now, muscular, and with a head of bright blonde hair. At nearly sixteen, he had finally grown into his feet. But times like this he wished he could shrink down to the size of an ant.  
"What's wrong?" Peggy asked, leaning forward from her side on the booth. "Do you know them?" She narrowed her eyes. “We don’t like them, do we?”

Steve shook his head, not wanting to talk or draw attention to himself. He could hear them at the register, placing their orders and complaining about some class or another. Next would be them looking for a table, and then—

"Hey, Stark, look at this! Stevie finally found himself a date!"

He could already feel the bile rising in the back of his throat, but said nothing. He had learned over the past few years that the best way to deal with them was just to say nothing and wait for them to go away. Playing possum, his grandma called it.

Peggy didn’t say anything either, though she did pick up her fork as if she might have to stab someone with it. 

Steve did look up, away from the chipped tabletop and at Tony Stark and his two friends, Clint and Thor. Tony, who had been pushed another year ahead after his mother died and moved off to high school without Steve, becoming a freshman at the age of twelve. While Steve was struggling with eighth grade math, Tony had gotten rid of his braces, his glasses, and somehow become best friends with the high school bullies. Tony had welcomed Steve to high school by laughing as Thor had shoved Steve into a row of lockers. Clint had taken pictures. 

And now Tony was here, with his designer jeans and his bright red backpack hanging off one shoulder. Freckles dotted the bridge of his nose, and the hard lines of his cheekbones made Tony look so much older than Steve knew he was.

It made a feeling in his chest like his heart was trying to commit suicide, only to fail and drop down to his stomach. Steve still didn’t know what was worse--never seeing Tony, or only seeing Tony like this. 

Tony laughed. "Yeah right. Not unless she's got a dick under that dress." That made Clint and Thor laugh as well. A small group of students had started to watch as well.

Steve turned to look at Peggy, grinding his teeth together, and watched as she looked at Tony, to Steve, and then back to Tony. Her red lips pursed together into an expression Steve wasn't sure he had ever seen before.

"Pardon?" she asked, looking up at Tony with a forced smile. She still hadn’t put the fork down.

Everyone looked at Peggy. In the diner, with the smell of grease and lemon disinfectant, her accent sounded disturbingly foreign.

Thor broke the silence with another obnoxious laugh that made Steve cringe. "I think she likes you," Thor said to Tony, who laughed at that too. 

But it was Clint who leaned down over the table, reeking of cheap body spray. He winked at Peggy. "What do you say, babe? Wanna come hang out with some real men?"

Peggy didn't say anything at first. The look on her face reminded Steve of a teapot, but he couldn't say why. She stood up slowly, and put the fork down. Standing in front of Clint, she still didn't say anything. Steve couldn't see her face from where he was sitting. What he could see was Peggy pulling back her arm and punching Clint Barton right in the nose.

The crowd gasped, parting as Clint fell back, grabbing his face. There was blood on his hands. 

“Talk to me like that again and I will break your nose,” Peggy announced, “not just bloody it.” She took a bill out of her pocket and left it on the table. “Come on, Steve. I think we’re done here.”

Some people cheered, Tony and Thor cursed while shoving napkins at Clint’s face, and as everything came to a boil Steve pulled his backpack on, let Peggy grab him by the wrist, and pulled her and her book bag out into the pouring rain, running down the street.

That night, Peggy came over to Steve’s room, through the window, and showed him clips of rugby games until just past midnight.


	5. Chapter 5

The sun hung low in the sky on that Saturday night two years later. Steve sat at the bay window, dressed in a rented tuxedo and playing Tetris on his cell phone. He turned the game off, though, at the sound of a car slowing down and pulling into the driveway.

"Peggy's here!" Steve called to his grandma in the kitchen. He got up , checked to see that he hadn't wrinkled the tux, and then straightened his bow tie just to be safe. It was a clip-on, so there was no reason it shouldn’t look perfect. 

Peggy had picked the entire outfit for him: mostly black, with a white shirt and navy blue bow tie. It matched the blue gown she had picked out for herself, she had explained, though she wouldn’t let him see the dress.

Steve opened the door and almost shut it again out of shock.

Peggy know how to dress, of course she did. She was all about fitted skinny jeans, pressed collared shirts, and the occasional pair of boots. She somehow managed to take whatever styles were in season and make them slightly more androgynous, and definitely more Peggy. Steve had known her for two years and only ever seen her in a skirt once.

"That’s…a dress,” Steve said dumbly. Somehow, even though Peggy had kept saying gown, it had never really sunk in that she would be wearing something different than normal. 

Peggy stood on his porch, skin glowing in the twilight porch light. A lot of skin, thanks to the halter neckline, the completely open back, and the slit up the leg. The dress was a shade of dark blue like an ocean of frozen blueberries. Indigo, his art training told him. The dress was indigo. 

"You alright?" Peggy asked, laughing and pushing past Steve into his house. She gave his grandmother a hug and a kiss on the cheek. 

The older woman had put on her own blue dress for the occasion, and was trying to figure out how to turn the digital camera in her hands on. “Could you help me with this dear?” she asked Peggy, who walked Steve’s grandma through how to turn the camera on. 

Finally, Steve managed to close his mouth and gather his wits. He shook his head. "Where did you even find that?" There was no store in the only mall in town that had anything like that.

Peggy did a small twirl for Steve's grandmother, who looked delighted. "I ordered it from London,” she explained. “I thought that a special night deserved a little piece of home. It’s not every night your date gets crowned prom king.”

But Steve wasn’t convinced. He smirked at his best friend. "Yeah, right. You found out that Pepper was going to prom, didn't you?”

"What?" Peggy asked, trying to look innocent. “Why would I care if she’s going to be there?”

"Oh Peggy," said Steve's grandmother, shoving the camera into his hands so she could grab Peggy by the shoulders. "That's not the awful girl who dumped you right before junior prom last year to go with boy with the silly name, is it?" The question made Peggy close her eyes, squinting. 

"Happy Hogan," Steve said, supplying the name. Pepper had dumped Peggy over text messaging just a month before junior prom for a guy from another high school. She and Steve had spent prom night drinking milkshakes and watching cartoon movies instead of attending. But that didn’t stop the pictures from showing up on their Facebook feeds, or their shared history class from being uncomfortably tense for the rest of the year. 

"I never liked her," Steve’s grandma said, giving Peggy’s shoulders another squeeze before letting her go. “You can do much better than that girl. She’s too distracted. Tell her, Stevie.”

“You never met her Gran,” Steve reminded his grandma, even though she had heard the two of them talking about Pepper enough to almost have met her. 

"Can we just take the picture now?" Peggy asked, clearly eager to change the topic of conversation. 

"Yeah," Peggy agreed. She led Steve to in front of the mantel, where they had taken their homecoming pictures earlier that school year. On the mantel was an old clock that no longer worked, a picture of Steve's parents from their wedding, and a picture of Steve and Bucky the Christmas Steve got him.

They stood in the same pose as their homecoming photos too: at an angle, with Steve putting an arm behind Peggy and gently holding her waist.

"Say cheese!" was the order and the flash burst out of the camera.  
After a few more pictures, dinner, and a wrong turn on the way to the venue, Peggy and Steve arrived. Peggy let the valet park her slightly dented compact car, and they had to show their tickets to two different teachers before being admitted into the balloon and streamer covered ballroom.  
It was loud, dark, and Steve was immediately uncomfortable. The flashing lights and gaudy crystal table decorations didn’t help. He looked over at Peggy, who was putting her purse on a table, and she looked to be about the same. As he covered her purse with his tuxedo jacket, Steve wondered if she was as uncomfortable as he was.

“The theme was supposed to be ‘under the sea,’” Peggy said. “I guess it could be worse. I was expecting giant inflatable fish.”

And that made Steve smile. “Giant fish might have made this better. Maybe this was a bad idea?" he asked, directly into her ear so she could hear him over the music.

"We have to stay!" Peggy replied, almost able to talk right into Steve's ear due to the height of her heels. "You're nominated for prom king. Tough it out, soldier."

So they stayed, picked at the snacks provided, and danced, and before Steve knew it the music was lower and the principle was on stage about to announce the winners.

Principle Fury, looking like he just stepped out of the school hallways in his usual ensemble of black-on-black, was the one to give out the awards that night. "And from prom king," he began, "This award goes to a very special student. This young man is not only the quarterback who scored the winning touchdown in this season's football game, but he also designed the sets for the spring musical, won the school district's art contest, and designed the cover for this year's yearbook. Your prom king is...Steve Rogers!"

After a gentle shove from Peggy, Steve made his way to the stage and let Principle Fury put the crown on his head. It was still hard to believe how amazing his senior year had been, what he had been able to do since Clint, Thor, and Tony had all graduated last year. p> The way everyone cheered made him want to go back off stage, but he knew he had to stay as the prom queen was announced. Principle Fury went through a similar speech, but Steve already knew who the queen would be, and he was sure the entire school did too. There was no reason the student body president, star of the dance team and state-wide debate champion shouldn’t be crowned prom queen.

"Pepper Potts!"

They had to dance now, in their ridiculous plastic crowns, and Steve thought he was going to be sick. Pepper had on a ridiculous dress, low cut and a shade of pink dark enough to compliment her red hair, all done up in wispy curls. Steve wondered as he took her hand if it was the same dress Pepper had worn to prom last year when she had gone with Happy. 

Probably not, he thought, as they started to dance. Pepper was too stylish for that.

About thirty seconds into the song, Pepper leaned closer to Steve and asked into his ear, "Hey, you're here with Peggy Carter, right?"

"Oh no," Steve said, wishing the song would hurry up and end. These slow ones tended to drag. "You are not dragging me into this." The grip he had on her waist tightened just a bit. "You either go talk to her properly like she deserves or you don't talk to her at all. I don't want you ruining this night for her by trying to make me your go-between."

Finally the song ended, and the entire room clapped. Steve jumped away from Pepper like she was suddenly a poisonous snake. But before the lights went back down, he saw her walk over to where Peggy was, and decided he would give the two of them some time.

This would be a good way for their senior year to end, Steve thought. He was prom king, and Peggy would get a second chance with Pepper. Maybe she and Pepper would have a summer romance before they all went off to college. And maybe at art school Steve would meet someone too. 

Steve went to go get a drink of water and a breath of fresh air away from the dancing masses. Peggy and Pepper were dancing close, so he was sure he wouldn’t be missed. 

It was during his quest to find some water that Steve bumped into Tony Stark.

"Tony?"

The food and water were set up outside the ballroom, so the lights were brighter and the music was duller, but Steve could have spotted Tony in the darkness of space. Those brown eyes, the disheveled hair, that five o'clock shadow on his jaw. And of course he had the most obnoxious gold tie Steve had ever seen.

Together it made Steve stop in his tracks. He felt fifteen again, weak, bullied. Like he wanted to run, but couldn’t. Like he hadn’t just been crowned prom king, even though he still had the crown on his head. 

"Steve! I've been looking for you! Heard the speech, by the way.” There was something off about his voice, but Steve couldn’t put his finger on it, and Tony just kept talking. “Can't believe you did all that! A lot must have changed since I graduated."

Steve felt like he had a lump of tangled knitting in his throat. "Uh, yeah," was all he could manage. It was easier than finding the words to explain that he was able to do so much more now that he wasn’t tormented daily by his childhood best friend and two thugs. "Look, what are you doing here? You’ve graduated."

Tony had graduated, which meant that Steve never had to see him again. Steve never wanted to see him again, and he definitely hadn’t wanted to see Tony tonight of all nights. 

Tony made a vague hand gesture and didn’t stop smiling. "Doesn't mean I can't buy a ticket. Look football captain, I gotta talk to you. I came here to talk with you. Come with me." He grabbed Steve by the cuff of his shirt and dragged him away from the ballroom, to a corridor near the bathrooms where Steve could barely hear the music.

Even though it had been a year, Steve still had to look down at Tony. He had always wondered if Tony would get any taller after he graduated, after he had gone away to MIT, like taking college classes might add a few inches to his height. He had only been fifteen at the time. But so far it didn't look like it.

"What do you want Tony?" Steve asked, fed up already. "Don't tell me you came all the way from MIT to make fun of me at prom." 

Because given their past, it was entirely possible. Steve hadn’t heard a peep from Tony once he graduated and became the news-worthy sixteen-year-old MIT freshman. Tony had changed his number and even blocked Steve on Facebook. Steve hadn’t even been invited to his going away party, unlike the rest of the high school. 

"No! No, no, no, no, no, no, no," Tony slurred quickly, shaking his head. He took a step closer to Steve, which made Steve instinctively step back. Another step, and Steve's shoulders hit the hotel wall. "No. I've been doing a lot of thinking, intra...introspecting. Lots of free time between classes and all that, you know, super easy engineering intro wastes of my genius time. Fuck intro classes, man. Like we're working on these engines and really it's all so simple but we still have to draw diagrams and really this is what robots are for—"

"Tony."

Steve had to stop him. Seeing Tony like this, alone and smiling and rambling on because he clearly hadn’t been born with a brain to mouth filter was too much for Steve, too much like the old Tony, the old Steve-and-Tony amalgamation that they used to be back in middle school. All this was doing was reminding Steve why he had multiple sketchbooks full of Tony Stark’s stupid face. 

"Right, right. Right. Anyway, thinking. I've been thinking. About you, actually. A lot about you." He moved in closer, and Steve could smell his aftershave.

He knew that smell, slightly musty and obviously expensive. He had caught whiffs of it in the high school hallways when Tony walked past, making snide comments about him. And he had had dreams about it, about this, about being so close to Tony that he could catalog the shades of brown in his eyes and count each stubble hair on his chin. 

Steve watched as Tony moved his mouth around, like he was trying to remember how to physically make words, or dislocate his jaw. Steve wasn’t sure. What he was sure of was that Tony had just placed his hand on Steve's arm. Suddenly things were too much like Steve’s dream, and the smell of alcohol (Whiskey? Rum? Was there even a difference? Steve didn’t know.) overpowered the smell of Tony’s aftershave. 

Tony was drunk. Tony Stark was drunk and at Steve’s senior prom and touching Steve’s arm. It was like a hellish distortion of everything Steve had ever wanted and he felt like he was going to be sick, going to throw up mini hot dogs and brownie bits all over Tony’s tie that probably cost more than Steve’s entire rental tux. 

"I like you, Steve," Tony finally said, in a way that made the pressure on Steve's arm tense under Tony’s hand. "A lot."

And then just like that, with prom roaring on in the background and the smell of alcohol on his lips, Tony kissed Steve right on the mouth.

Steve had thought about kissing Tony Stark a lot. When he was in sixth grade, it was always in daydreams that were modeled off teen comedies from the eighties that he watched with his grandma: a sweet kiss, a peck really, in the rain sometimes or at night but always soft and romantic with the promise of a relationship. He spent three months in the seventh grade wishing that Tony would stand outside his bedroom window with a giant boombox. But it had never happened. 

When he was older, when Tony had left him for Clint and Thor and high school popularity, the day dreams changed to darker fantasies. They became things he usually didn't even want to admit to himself that he still wanted, because he was sure it wasn’t normal to picture your bully naked on your bed like that. 

What he never thought of was this. Tony existed now only in memories, daydreams, and sketches. He should not have Steve backed against a hotel wall, holding on to his arm while he pushed himself up on the balls of his feet and to kiss Steve. Steve had no idea what to do so he did nothing, letting Tony press his mouth against his own. They were still and shaky like grainy, sandstone statues. 

This was his first kiss, Steve thought suddenly. Tony Stark was kissing him and this was his first kiss and—

"Tony," Steve said, pushing Tony away, "What is this? Have...have you been drinking?" Because he didn’t want it like that. Steve didn’t want this to be some drunken mistake Tony could laugh about on Monday with his college friends. Steve had been the butt of enough jokes already, had his heart destroyed enough already. He wouldn’t give Tony the chance to do it again. 

"What? No. Well, yeah, but I’m not really drunk. I mean I've had a few. I’ve got a flask if you want some? I Could go for more, really. Maybe later." Tony was rambling again, still in Steve’s space and looking up with impossibly large eyes. 

"You're sixteen!" Steve said, as if that explained anything. He deliberately moved Tony away from him. 

Tony looked confused, as if the space between them had materialized against his will and he had no idea how matter could even do that. "No, no, that's not the point. None of that is the fucking point, don’t you get it? I'm confessing feelings here. Let's focus on that."

And for a terrible, scalding moment Steve almost agreed. Because he could never say no to Tony Stark, not ever, and this would be one more way that Tony would ruin his life. Tony was trying to corner Steve into a mistake, a heart break. And maybe it was the crown on his head, or the fact that the only thing he was wearing that was really his were his underwear, or the fact that everything and nothing that he had ever wanted, but something in Steve snapped. 

"No.” The word bounced between them like a hand grenade. “I'm done with you," Steve said slowly, surprised that he felt like he actually meant it. He wanted to stop there, but the words he had kept bottled up, every conversation choreographed in the shower when he was washing his hair, came crashing to his mouth and broke free. “I’ve been done with you. You can't just show up at prom like nothing's wrong and kiss me, not after what you did."

He could tell from the way Tony’s face fell that Tony knew exactly what Steve was talking about, that they were both thinking of the same incidents and the same times: the days when Tony joined Clint in throwing rocks at Steve on his way home after he made chorus in the musical his freshman year, the time Thor spray painted “fag” on Steve’s locker, the time those three almost got Steve kicked off the junior varsity football team with the rumors they were spreading about him, and all the ways Tony used what he knew about Steve from their friendship to turn Steve’s life into a living hell. 

He stepped away from the wall and from Tony, who luckily was not saying anything. "Go home, Tony. I don’t want you here," was the last thing Steve said to Tony before heading back towards the ballroom, prom, and Peggy.

The next time Steve would see Tony in person would be ten years later.


End file.
